Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1400 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.)

There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the page. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

29 October 2010

++= something added later

2001

Anne Lawrence gets PhD from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality at San Francisco.

Kenneth Zucker takes over Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Anne Lawrence contributes to the 6th version of HBIGDA SOC.

Richard Ekins & Dave King. “Transgendering, Migrating and Love of Oneself as a Woman: A Contribution to a Sociology of Autogynephilia”. IJT 5,3, www.wpath.org/journal/www.iiav.nl/ezines/web/IJT/97-03/numbers/symposion/ijtvo05no03_01.htm.
Points out that autogynephilia in MTFs very similar to that in cis women. Use concept with ‘femaling’ modes. “In our judgement, our framework provides the conceptual wherewithal to unpack such issues in a way denied to the taxonomic, typological and diagnostic approach followed by Blanchard.”

2002

The CAMH GIC was awarded a Presidential Citation from Div 44 of the American Psychological Association. Ray Blanchard accepted the award on behalf of CAMH

2003

J. Michael Bailey. The
Man Who Would Be Queen: the science of gender-bending and transsexualism. Washington:
Joseph Henry; Oxford: Oxford Publicity Partnership. 256 pp 2003. The
Joseph Henry imprint is part of the National Academies Press.

Ray Blanchard writes his one and only Amazon review in favour of Bailey’s book. "Prof. Bailey's book, which is written for a general audience in a clear and accessible style, has the potential to bring the same reassurance to a much larger group of people."

The National Academies Press page quotes Anne Lawrence describing Bailey’s book as "a wonderful book on an important subject", and Simon Levey that it is "Absolutely splendid". www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10530.

Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence gave papers at the Third International Body Integrity Disorder Meeting in 2003 comparing BIID (apotemnophilia=desire to have a limb removed) to Gender identity disorder. See overview by Andrea James.

Lesbian right-winger Tammy Bruce used Anne Lawrence as one
of her examples of 'moral vacuum' in her book, The Death of Right
and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values. Roseville,
Calif: Forum: 92-4.

2004

Joan Roughgarden writes open letter to the National Academy. "I wonder if many psychologists fully grasp the image some of their colleagues are projecting---psychology as a discipline without standards, nourishing a clique of dumbly insensitive bigots. These psychologists don’t seek to help people, but to dominate them by controlling the definition of normalcy. Their bogus categories and made-up diseases are intended to subordinate, not to describe."

Lambda Literary Foundation nominated Bailey’s book as a finalist in the transgender category.

Christine Burns initiates an online petition which gathers thousand of signatures in just a few days., and the nomination was withdrawn

Paul McHugh. Surgical Sex”. First Things. 147, November 2004., 34-38. Online at: http://web.archive.org/web/20041126235726/http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411/articles/mchugh.htm. "One group consisted of conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men who saw a sex-change as a way to resolve their conflicts over homosexuality by allowing them to behave sexually as females with men. The other group, mostly older men, consisted of heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females."

2005

++ Autogynephila Yahoo group closed for multiple violations of Terms of Service. Rumour is that this was engineered by Jennifer Usher.

"In my eye, we MTFs come in two varieties: started-out-straight and started-out-gay. Started-out-straight MTFs include crossdressers and most later-transitioning transsexuals, and our hallmarks are 1) We enjoy being women (and are deeply satisfied by anything that tells us that that’s what we’re doing). 2) We aren’t spontaneously and uncontrollably effeminate. 3) We’re attracted to women (whether we develop a fondness for men later on or not). 4) We gravitate toward business or technical careers. Started-out-gay MTFs include drag queens and most early-transitioning (say before 30) transsexuals. Their hallmarks are 1) They act like women and were effeminate from the start. 2) They don’t automatically love being women. If they’re well-received en femme, they seek it out. If not, they may be content to live more as drag queens or conventional gay men. 3) Most I’ve met will laugh off the idea of ever being attracted to a woman. 4) They gravitate toward people-oriented or creative careers."

Ray Blanchard quoted: “A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you're creating”. Jane Armstrong. “The Body within, the body without”. The Globe and Mail, 12 June 2004, p. F1. Online at: http://evalu8.org/staticpage?page=review&siteid=7950.

2007

Jennifer Usher and Diane Kearny, of the US Protestant HBS group, frequently use ‘autogynephile’ to mean non-HBS although they do not equate HBS and HSTS, and both HBS and HSTS are adamant that they are not the other. "I do believe many today come from the behavioral mode of fetishism and through peer influence and/or as an extension of their own fetishism grow into what might well describe the autogynephilic not unlike the multitudes of the Lawrence's and Arune's in this world whom I suspect outnumber the true transsexual/HBS by an overwhelming number (Kearny-10/05/2009)".

Liberal government of Ontario reinstates partial funding of SRS under OHIP.

2009

Ray Blanchard Chair of the paraphilia sub-working group for the new DSM-V.

Transkids site revived by Kay Brown writing as Cloudy. She also started a blog: On the Science of Changing Sex. "I slept through the controversy surrounding the publication of The Man Who Would Be Queen. ... Prof. Bailey graciously gave me access to an online version of the book and I read it from front to back in nearly one sitting. Although I disagreed with several minor points, I felt I could have written the book myself. I agreed with each and every major point. Who wouldn't, if they knew what I know."

Charles Moser. “Autogynephilia in Women”. Journal of Homosexuality. The first study of autogynephilia in cis women found that 28% are frequently so.

Zagria “What is Autogynephilia?”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who. 22 March 2009. http://zagria.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-autogynephilia.html. "Blanchard’s supporters applaud that he has increased the types of transsexual from one to two. His detractors are appalled that the wide variety of transsexuality has been reduced to two stereotypes".

Ophelia Bradley. ’They Need Labels’: Contemporary Institutional And Popular Frameworks For Gender Variance. MA Thesis. Georgia State University. Discusses AGP, HSTS and HBS persons using their blog names rather than their person names.

Rose White’s book Harry Benjamin Syndrome Review constantly miswrites autogynephile as ‘autogyne’, and uses it as an insult while at the same time insisting that an HBS woman is obsessed with clothes and makeup.

Alice Novic. "Autogynephilia: An Illuminating, Gut-Wrenching Conversation with Ray Blanchard, Ph.D.". Crossdreamers. Oct 22, 2010. www.crossdreamers.com/2010/10/autogynephilia-illuminating-gut.html. "Am I angry with Ray Blanchard? A little bit, for being such an old stick in the mud, because I think he could change his term for us without compromising his principles. He is no transgender activist, not even one bit. He has not given us useful slogans stamped with seal of science that we can take to our wives and our congressmen. But he is a scientist who has devoted a large chunk of his career to the rigorous study of us, a rather small, not terribly well funded group of people. And for that I am thankful, very thankful."

Julia M. Serano. ‘The Case Against Autogynephilia.’ International Journal of Transgenderism, 12:3, 176-187. "If proponents of autogynephilia insist that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, then autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory’s two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true."

27 October 2010

Marjorie Garber did a BA at Swarthmore College, 1966, and a PhD at Yale University, 1969. She is a noted Shakespearean scholar, with wider interests in cultural studies, and is currently Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University.

In her 1993 book, Vested Interests, Garber explores the way that 'transvestism creates culture, and ... culture creates transvestites'. She points out that most commentators on the topic of transvestism look through rather than at the cross-dresser, seeing only a male or female manqué rather than a transvestite as such. Not that Garber herself perceives a third sex as a term or a 'sex':

'the "third" is a mode of articulation, a way of describing a space of possibility'. It challenges the 'binarity' of 'female' and 'male'.

In cultural terms, cross-dressing acts as an index of 'category crises'. Such category crises - failures of definitional distinctions, permeable borderlines between societies' categories: black/white; Jew/Christian; noble/bourgeois; master/servant - 'are the ground of culture itself', and the anxieties they provoke will 'always' displace onto a transvestite figure or mode.

The 'apparently spontaneous or unexpected or supplementary presence' of a transvestite, where the primary theme does not seem to be concerned with gender difference or blurred gender, indicates a category crisis elsewhere that has been displaced onto a figure that is already symbolic of the margin. Thus Garber goes on to explore the frequent appearance of transvestites in the interaction of Euro-American culture with Jew, blacks, Moslem countries etc.

Garber’s book, while she does here and there discuss real-life trans persons, is about the place of cross-dressing, or perhaps androgyny, in culture. This place can often be quite at odds with the place of real trans persons in society. The classic example is the ancient Greeks who had androgynous gods at the same time as they killed any intersex children.

Nobody really seems to have done any thing with Garber’s gigantic book, except to be in awe of her erudition. Her major insight is that category crises result in fictional trans persons of one kind or another, being created and appreciated. One the other hand, there are people who cannot tell fiction from real life, and being situated in a real-life cultural crisis, be it capitalism, colonialism, racial conflict, war or whatever, encounter a real-life trans person, and lash out, often killing the person, rather than dealing with the real-life oppression.

25 October 2010

Today mainly remembered for his many books on diet and health, Carlson Wade published a whole series of cheap paperbacks on many aspects of sex and gender in the 1960s, several of them co-authored by Edward Podolsky MD (1902 – 1965).

He wrote the second and the least reliable book on Coccinelle, two years after the book by her husband. He produced quickie essays to pad out extremely short transsexual autobiographies that were popular at that time. The essay by Wade and George Griffith in the Abby Sinclair book is a historical survey of eunuchs, castratos and ‘hermaphrodites’, with only a few pages on actual transsexuals. His essay in the Gayle Sherman book relies heavily on George Henry's All the Sexes, 1955.

23 October 2010

Mr Winston took the name of a Hollywood Star and as Gloria Swanson became a drag star who won several prizes in Chicago’s drag balls in the 1920s.

In 1928 she was hostess at the Book Store, a speakeasy which which became popular as it was known that she was a permanent fixture. She was a creature of the night, breakfasting in the evening and dining at dawn. She wore mainly evening gowns, was rarely in street clothing, and almost never in male attire. She was plump, jolly and bawdy, and also a good cook. She was completely accepted by the underworld and bohemian types who came to her club. The Book Store was protected by a major gangster until they had a jealousy row and Gloria almost wreaked the joint. After that the man withdrew his protection, and the police began raiding the club.

So in 1930 Gloria moved to New York, and quickly became the hostess at a popular cellar club on 134th Street. She sang bawdy parodies, and danced a little, and was always well-dressed in evening gowns. Apart from those in the know, many of her clients never suspected that she was not a woman.

This lasted until Fiorello La Guardia became mayor of New York in 1934 and as part of his reforms had the police stamp out the pansy subculture. Gloria's admirers failed to recognize her now that she was forced into male attire. She also became ill, and had to withdraw from public life altogether.

George Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books 1994: 251.

1914

1921

1930

1931

1936

Magnus Hirschfeld revised by Arthur Koestler and Norman Haire.Sexual Anomalies And Perversions: Physical And Psychological Development And Treatment - A Summary Of The Works Of The Late Dr Magnus Hirschfeld. Francis Aldor Publisher, 1936. Emerson Books,1948. Until the 1991 translation of Die Transvestiten, this is the Hirschfeld book used by most English sexologists.

1971

Virginia Prince. How To Be A Woman Though Male. Sandy Thomas Publications 193 pp.

1972

Georges Zavitzianos proposes the term 'homeovestite'. Despite its similarity to autogynephilia in women, Blanchard will never address the term.

1973

Ray Blanchard completes his PhD, and moves to Canada.

Edward Westall separates from his wife.

Thomas Kando. Sex Change; The Achievement of Gender Identity Among Feminized Transsexuals. Springfield, Ill: Thomas. By limiting his sample to recently transitioned transsexuals, Kando creates a picture that will later be compared to autogynephilia.

1974

Denise Magner has surgery at Johns Hopkins GIC.

Jan Morris. Conundrum. London: Faber. The best-selling
autobiography written in her immediately post-op euphoria phase
contributes to the false image that Kando initiated.

Ethel Person and Lionel
Ovesey. “The transsexual syndrome in males. II. Secondary
transsexualism”. American. Journal of Psychotherapy 28;
4-20. They designated a Primary Transsexual as one who is functionally
asexual and who progresses resolutely toward a surgical resolution without
significant deviation toward either homosexuality or heterosexuality. They
define a Secondary Transsexual as one who is a homosexual and effeminate
from early childhood into adulthood. Within the Secondary classification
they identified two sub-classes: Homosexual transsexualism and
Transvestitic transsexualism.

1975

Paul McHugh appointed head psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University.

The Clarke Institute Gender Identity Clinic becomes full-time with the blessing of the Ontario Ministry of Health

1976

Ray Blanchard becomes a clinical psychologist at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton, where he meets Kurt Freund.

1977

Edward Westall becomes Susan Huxford, and is accepted by the Clarke GIC.

1979

Paul McHugh closes the Johns Hopkins GIC.

Janice Raymond. The Transsexual
Empire. Boston: Beacon Press: Chp III draws on Kando and Morris to
describe all transsexuals as if they are similar to autogynephiles.
Blanchard never refers to this book in print.

1986

FACT re-organizes as Transition Toronto in rebellion against Susan Huxford.

Frederick L. Whitam and Robin M. Mathy. Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States. New York: Praeger. Like Freund & Blanchard, Whitam divides trans persons into two types based on sexual orientation and stereotypes them in a similar way. Neither Blanchard nor his acolytes ever mention this book.

1989

Ray Blanchard. “The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria”. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177, 616-623.

1990

Ray Blanchard & Betty W.
Steiner (eds.). Clinical management of gender identity disorders
in children and adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric
Press. Includes a paper on "Gender Identity Disorders in Adult
Women" by Blanchard where he does recognize some heterosexual women
(i.e. gay trans men), but only the four cases published in psychiatric
journals. Lou Sullivan is still being ignored.

1991

Emily S.Apter. Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. The first major book refuting the nonsense idea that woman cannot be fetishistic.

Magnus
Hirschfeld translated into English by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. Tranvestites:
The Erotic urge to Crossdress. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. 424 pp.
81 years later, this essential book is finally available in English.

1992

Anjelica Keiltyka transitions.

1993

Louise J. Kaplan Female
Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary. New York: Doubleday, 1991. London:
Penguin 1993. While written according to the conventions of
psychoanalysis, a clear demonstration that women can be fetishistic.

1994

Ray Blanchard on the gender dysphoria sub-working group for the DSM-IV, 1994.

Denise Magner active as Kiira Triea in Hermaphrodites with Attitude, a publication of the Intersex Society of North America.

Betty Steiner and her husband die from fumes from car running in their garage.

Vivianne Namaste. Access Denied: A Report on the Experiences of Transsexuals and Transgenderists with Health Care and Social Services in Ontario. Commissioned by CLGRO: Project Affirmation, July, 1995. www.clgro.org/pdf/Access_Denied.pdf.

His first book was The Protestant Spanish Community in New York, 1960. He spoke Spanish and Portuguese fluently and traveled extensively in Latin American and the Philippines. He visited homosexual locations in Phoenix, Arizona; New York City; Cherry Grove, Fire Island, Long Island; Guatemala City; São Paulo, and Cebu, Philippines.

His major work is Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States which was published in 1986, only one year after the Clarke Institute's Gender Dyphoria. He argues that homosexuality and transvestic homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality and occurs in all societies, and homosexuals in general tend to patterns of early cross-gender behavior.

He used a standardized interview schedule of questions mainly concerned with the informant's retrospective analysis of their pasts. As Donovan points out, Whitam waffles the distinction between homosexual behavior and homosexual identity. His interest is in the 'effeminate' male homosexual more than in masculine homosexuals. He says that "drag … an intrinsic aspect of homosexuality (p82)".

However,

"The dichotomy between masculine and feminine homosexuals is not entirely a creation of the homosexual subculture. Rather, manifestations of cross-gender behavior appear early in homosexuals in all societies, and these persons usually enter the homosexual subculture with cross-gender patterns already evident, giving the subculture its cross-gendered dimension. (p69)".

He protests the general assumption that transvestites are mainly heterosexual.

"Some sex researchers have limited the use of the term transvestism to heterosexual transvestism, on the erroneous assumption that homosexual transvestism is just 'playing at cross-dressing'. Some heterosexual transvestites, not wanting to be identified as being homosexual, have insisted that they are the 'true transvestites' and take a demeaning attitude towards drag queens and female impersonators. (p80)."

Like Blanchard, Whitam sees two types of transvestite, defined by sexual orientation, and attracted to quite different occupations, and that it is mainly the homosexual transvestites who are cross-gendered as children. In the paper that Whitam wrote for the Bulloughs in 1997 he also includes observations made in Thailand and Indonesia by other sociologists. He repeats his complaint about the heterosexual appropriation of the word transvestite. He lists 10 characteristics of "homosexual TVs/TSs":

Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States and the Clarke Institute's Gender Dysphoria were published within a year of each other. They both divide male born trans persons into two types based on sexual orientation and make rather similar comments about the two types. There is no mention in Whitam of Blanchard, and I have not been able to find any mention of Whitam in the works of Blanchard or his followers. Another example of two solitudes that should be talking to each other. However it is a mark of pseudo-science that its authors are not interested in similar conclusions by other writers.

Somewhat unusually for a sociologist, Whitam is a biological determinist.

While he claims that transvestic homosexuals are universal, he pays no attention to, for example, Randolph Trumbach, who has written much on the emergence of the mollies in 18th century London. Trumbach’s work would imply that transvestic homosexuals appear with a sufficient amount of urbanization, and as such are part of the modern world.

In addition Whitam says nothing about Africa, the Arab nations or Europe.

I agree wholeheartedly with Whitam re the heterosexual appropriation of transvestite (and also transgender). See my comments on the non-inclusion of José Sarria in Susan Stryker’s Transgender History.

However I am opposed to the post-Hirschfeld division of trans persons into two types based on sexual orientation. There are heterosexual drag queens and female impersonators, fetishistic gay transvestites and gay transvestites whom you never describe as drag queens.

15 October 2010

Angel Segarra was one of 13 children, of many different fathers, of an abusive Puerto Rican mother in the South Bronx.

At the age of 15 she was taking female hormones, courtesy of the quack doctor Jimmy Treetop, and presenting as female on Christopher Street. She was inspired by Dorian Corey, and lived for a while in the House of Corey.

At 16 she was a star at the voguing balls, standing out by her fashion sense, as opposed to the outlandish costumes of Corey and Pepper LaBeija. She won the prize for being the most convincing model. She performed at Sally's Hideaway.

She lived by turning tricks and was the house mother for the Xtravaganza clan, being regarded as a mother by trans women and hookers several years older than herself.

Anji was diagnosed with Aids at the age of 25, and died of complications at the age of 27. Her ashes were sent back to the South Bronx, but under the name of Angel Segarra.

10 October 2010

Romanian-born Sanda Davis, has psychology degrees from the Universities of Bucharest and Ottawa, and wrote a doctorate thesis, Principes a Appliquer en Education Familiale, Surgis du Fonctionalisme Systémique, at the University of Mons, Belgium in 1999. However she is currently listing herself as "Phd Cnd". She published two books in 1995: Multiples in Love and Am I a Man or a Woman? Both by Personality Press which has not published anything by anyone else.

She takes the concept of 'introjection', a term that has been used by psychoanalysts and Gestalt therapists, but puts her own spin on it. An introjection is an internal image of another person. We all have introjections, and for many they are no more than memories. Many of us have strong introjections where the memory becomes obsessive, especially if it is associated with trauma or abuse. In one of Davis' stronger examples she uses the concept of introjections to explain how abuse victims later become abusers themselves in that the remembered voice of the initial abuser is still inside and controlling the person.

She sees multiple personalities (dissociative identity disorder) as competing introjections. She sees Gender Identity Disorder (her preferred term) as a special type of dissociative identity disorder in which one of the alternative identities (introjections) has become so dominant that it becomes the major personality.

"All humans acquire Introjects. Depending on specific factors, Introjects may or may not lead to dissociation, even to severe forms of dissociation. Reflecting the person that is imprinted as an Introject, some Introjects are content with limited control, while others take over completely, using, abusing, and transforming the body. Such is the case with Gender Identity Disorder: a cross-gender Introject takes over the body, and demands gender reassignment.(DIFH:1.2)"

"In most cases Gender Identity Disorder is a psychological disorder of traumatic origin that usually starts in early childhood, and afflicts millions of people in the entire world. Cross-dressing and transsexuality are the most popular manifestations of this disorder. In reality, GID is a much deeper disorder characterized by confusion, trance states, attention deficit, memory problems, headaches, psychosomatic symptoms,physical numbness, reduced or variable sexual potency, possible impotence, mood swings, reading and learning difficulties, potentially lethal depression, low self esteem, self mutilation and more.(DIFH: 2.1)"

She explains that most men have introjections of their mothers, sisters, girls at school, wives etc, but in a male with GID these female introjections coalesce and become dominant. This composite introjection comes to think of itself as the true person in the body, and then starts wearing female clothing and proclaiming herself to be woman. Well-meaning friends and relatives make the situation worse by accepting the claim. Davis says that she can cure any case of GID by getting the female introjection to admit that she is not the true personality of the body.

"Once the 'female' introject that splits the male's personality system is released and the original parts integrate, the male has no more Gender Dysphoria" (Davis, 1995:152).

An obvious omission from her book is any discussion of religious experience in terms of introjections. However the Ottawa Citizen from 1997 quotes Davis saying that

"she has seen demons surface in her psychotherapy clients, then laugh and walk out of the office with them. Other clients have been inhabited by the souls of the dead. "

It also quotes the College of Psychologists of Ontario that

"Ms. Davis can't legally advertise her services as a psychologist because she is not registered with the college. But she says there is nothing to stop anybody from advertising their services as a psychotherapist, or as a soul worker."

At that time she was charging up to $80 a hour, and described herself as a "conservative Christian".
Since then she has had an epiphany and realized that she is The Mother God. On her Blogger profile she says:

"I am GOD. The Original GOD, in human form with infinite aspects to my being.
Why are people not engaging in dialogue with me when I tell them who I am."

09 October 2010

Scott Goehring was raised in Indiana and was educated at Purdue University and Indiana University. He was married, as an undergraduate, to a wife whose previous husband had been a Scientologist. They had two children.

In 1991 he founded the Usenet Group alt.religion.scientology, and controversially added a flag.sea.org mail id to the application which implied a Scientology co-sponsor. By 1995 the Usenet group had become a high-volume group with confrontations between skeptics, and believers, cancelbots and law suits.

By then Kelly and Scott were involved in the Agoran Nomic MUD gaming. In 1999 Kelly came out as transgender to the Agoran Nomic MUD community and acknowledged that she and Scott were the same person. In 2001 Scott and his wife were divorced, and Scott legally became Kelly Martin.

In 2004 Kelly joined Wikipedia and quickly rose through sysop to the Arbitration Committee. In 2006 she was forced to resign. She works as a systems developer in Linux and Windows environments.

Note that the Wikipedia page was initially called "Scott Goehring", and then renamed to "alt.religion.scientology".

Religious Freedom Watch, like CCHR, is part of the Church of Scientology. A well-known HBS organizer is a registered CCHR investigator and promotes CCHR on her site. Note that the Religious Freedom Watch includes a photograph of Kelly, refers to her all through as "Scott Goehring", and uses only male pronouns.

07 October 2010

James Arthur Hamilton was raised in Vancouver. His father, an immigrant from the US, was a foundry worker and union organizer until he developed silicosis of the lungs. His mother was a Chippewa native, originally from Montana, and a founder of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre. Together they co-founded the Unemployed Citizens Welfare Improvement Council (UCWIC), and were among the first members of the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association (DERA).

However they did not understand about transsexuality, although their child became a patient of William Maurice at the University of British Columbia Health Centre, and as such the first teenager in Canada to be accepted as transsexual. James was taunted at school and left at 15.

She turned tricks both as male and as female and worked in bars as a female impersonator. She became Jamie Lee in 1975. Her father, who had been reading up on transsexuality, gave his blessing though on his death bed in 1979. Jamie Lee completed her transition with surgery in 1983.

In 1984, a residents' movement in Vancouver's West End obtained an injunction in the BC Supreme Court that completed the pushing of sex workers and deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients into the industrial no-man's land of Downtown Eastside. Jamie Lee became an activist for her local community, for sex workers, for aboriginals, for transsexuals and gays.

She held various positions in Downtown Eastside Residents' Association (DERA). She organized DERA demonstrations when long-term residents were evicted for Expo 86. She was elected the 10th Native Princess, 1988, and the same year was the founding president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) sub local 15, which is still going. She was Ms Gay Vancouver, 1991, which led to her performing with the New York travelling cast of A Chorus Line. In 1993 she started a hot meal and food bank program for trans sex workers from the First United Church. From 1993-7 she ran a clothing boutique, food bank and drop-in for sex workers.

She first ran for a seat on Vancouver City council in 1996, the first trans person in Canada to run for public office. She came 14th out of 58, the first 10 being elected. Xtra West awarded her their Community Hero Award. From 1996 to 2001 she ran Grandma's House, a non-profit centre for sex workers, and agitated to bring attention to the missing women in the period before the arrest of serial killer Robert Pickton.

She dumped 67 pairs of stiletto shoes on the steps of City Hall to symbolize 67 missing women. In 2000 she was arrested and charged with running a bawdy house. Her release was conditional that she close Grandma's house. She is the founder of Change the Code, a national lobby group advocating legal reforms re prostitution. She ran for member of Parliament for the Green Party in 2000. In 2006 she campaigned successfully against an attempt to trademark the word 'Pride'. In 2008 she attempted to run as a parks board candidate, but was dropped as a candidate as being too controversial. In 2009 she was one of many refused service at Lu's women-only pharmacy.

She is again running a community centre for sex workers. She is doing a thesis at the University of British Columbia: "The Expulsion of Sex Workers from Vancouver's West End, 1975-1985". She has a list of over 25 women who have disappeared since Pickton was arrested, and argues that there is at least one other similar killer.

“Hamilton is, famously, 'an unrepentant whore.' Is she also an unrepentant madam? Sitting with her recently, I ask point-blank, 'So, were you running a bawdy house?' She looks nonplussed: 'Well, yeah.' A hand flicks at some imaginary dirt on a cushion. 'But so is every five-star hotel in this country.'

'And you know what I really resented? They called it a common bawdy house. Listen, there was nothing common about it.'"

The Unrepentant Whore: How Jamie Lee Hamilton

changed the way we look at Canada’s underclass.

The biography of Jamie Lee Hamilton by Barbra Daniel seems to be totally unobtainable. Neither Amazon, nor any other retailer, has a copy. I tried and failed to get it through interlibrary loan. As it was published in Canada, there should be a copy in the National Library of Canada, but there is not.

05 October 2010

At the age of five Jimmy was an arieliste with the De Forest Aerial Troup as Mlle Petite De Forest, in line with the circus tradition that more customers would pay to see a girl trapeze artist.

De Forest & Dempsey, June 1919

At the age of 12 he quit and drifted into the Bowery fight clubs. He went to Europe to learn training and massage in military camps. On return to the US he earned a reputation as a trainer and manager. He managed Jack Dempsey and other major boxers.

He retired in 1926. He died in Long Branch, New Jersey after a long illness and in poverty.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.